Go surfing at The Pass, make easy money…

You might’ve heard about trouble rustling among the palm trees of that #vanlife and retro-fab logger paradise, Bryon Bay.

Loggers, see, the authentic ones with hair bowl-cut in the manner of superhero George Greenough and dragging their immense craft tail-down across the sand like weak children (ironic), don’t dig wearing leashes.

The issue reached peaked a year or so ago after a few faces had been rearranged by leashless logs at the Pass, described here, as “the most dangerous surf spot on the east coast of Australia – if you rank danger by chance of collision occasioning  actual board and bodily harm. For the everyday surfer it is a write off. A world-class wave buried under a blanket of narcissistic greed. A sad indictment of the human race’s propensity to make too much out of a good thing.” 

One prominent MP, Ian Cohen, who made a name for himself in 1985 protesting nuclear-capable US warships in Sydney Harbour by hitching a ride on the bow of a destroyer with his board, says he won’t go near the Pass without a helmet and wants a sort of water-born police force. 

Pussy, and fuck that, you fascist. Who needs more cops?

Anyway, salvation is at hand and a win, I think, for everybody, at least in the short term.

Local solicitors Somerville Laundry Lomax have advertised their services should you cop a board in the head, body, whatever, and you want to roast the person responsible like a pecan flambé in court.

In an advertisement in the local newspaper, The Echo, SLL ask: Have you been injured by a surfer whose board was not restrained by a legroom? If so, and you know the details of the surfer at fault, call etc.

I ain’t no lawyer but the sentence “Have you been injured by a surfer whose board was not restrained” seems a little off.

I’ve never been hit by a surfer and I believe the essence of recent complaints was that loose surfboards were the prob not the pilot who, you would imagine, is swimming somewhere out the back while his nine-six pinballs through the kids and grand mammies on plastic floatation devices.

Anyway, sounds like they’ll jump on your case in a no-win, no-fee sorta deal.

Call ’em.

A rational response to outrageous drop-in?

How many surf fights y’seen live? As in, punches thrown, landed and so on.

One of the better ones I’ve seen was at Burleigh Heads. A local man dropped in on an out-of-towner, not so much a Val, more the Emerging Intermediate. The Gold Coast points will forgive a multitude of sins, technique wise, and even a surfer who has yet to master rudimentary turns can appear competent on the easy long walls.

The EI didn’t say a word. The local did a roundhouse cutback off the guy and they disappeared. A few seconds later the local surfaced holding a clump of the shrieking man’s bristly yellow hair in his fist.

You had to laugh, I suppose.

Yesterday, at Kirra, a couple of surfers went at it after the usual drop-in.

If you’ve ever chased a cyclone swell, you’ll know how difficult it is to get any sorta wave, let alone something that’s going to make the trip worth the time and shekels. So when you’ve waited two hours, manoeuvred yourself through the pack, negotiated the ledge and someone else is gobbling up your tube steak?

Well, it makes your blood boil don’t it.

And who can be expected to act rationally in this scenario?